Mesopotamia Campaign (1914–1918)

MESOPOTAMIA CAMPAIGN (1914–1918)

In November 1914, within days of the British declaration of war on the Ottoman Empire (which was allied with Germany in World War I), the British landed an Indian Expeditionary Force (IEP) at Basra in Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq). Meeting scant resistance from the Ottoman Turks, the IEF moved north and, in April 1915, Sir John Nixon took command. Nixon ordered his lieutenant, Sir Charles Townshend, to advance north—up the river Tigris toward Baghdad. By November 1915, Town-shend succeeded in advancing to Ctesiphon, just south of Baghdad, but his supply lines were stretched thin, and he was repulsed by the newly invigorated Ottoman armies under the command of German General Kolmar von der Goltz. Townshend retreated south to Kut al-Amara, where he was trapped by the Ottoman Turks.

The British failed to reinforce Townshend, and after a 146-day siege, he surrendered his entire force on 29 April 1916. Lacking men and matériel, the Turks were unable to take advantage of the victory. Under the command of Sir Frederick Maude, the British again advanced north, retook Kut on 22 February 1917 and entered Baghdad on 11 March. By September, the British were in control of central Iraq, and by the war's end in 1918, they had occupied all of Mesopotamia south of the city of Mosul.

Abadan

Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa
COPYRIGHT 2004 The Gale Group, Inc.

ABADAN

a city with large oil refineries and an island in the province of khuzistan in southwest iran.

The island of Abadan is 40 miles long and from 2 to 12 miles wide. The island is bounded by the Shatt al-Arab River on the west, the Karun River on the north, and the Persian Gulf on the south. The city, 9 miles from the northwestern tip of the island, was first mentioned by Muslim geographers during in the mid-ninth century. In medieval times it was of importance to travelers and navigators as a source of woven straw mats, supplier of salt, and center of shipping and navigation.

The modern city that developed after 1910 was due to the oil industry. The first oil refinery, which was opened by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company in 1912 with an annual capacity of 120,000 tons, grew into one of the world's largest refineries by the 1960s. Abadan's population grew with its economic development. In 1948 refinery employees formed one-third of the city population of about 100,000. By the 1950s the city's population reached about 220,000, and in 1976 it was 296,000, making Abadan the fifth largest city in the country. In August 1978 more than 400 persons burned to death in a fire at an Abadan cinema. This incident became a precursor to the 1979 revolution.

The Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988) heavily damaged the refinery as well as the city. Most of the population fled during the war, but some returned during the 1990s, when most of the city was reconstructed.

Because it is an industrial islet heavily influenced by foreign capitalist enterprise that uses the country's unskilled labor and raw material, Abadan's social structure is strongly segregated ethnically and economically. According to the 1996 census, the population of the reconstructed city was 206,073.

see also
khuzistan.

Parvaneh Pourshariati

Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography.

Abadan

The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.

Copyright The Columbia University Press

Abadan (ăbədăn´, äbädän´), city (1991 pop. 84,774), Khuzestan prov., SW Iran, on Abadan Island, in the delta of the Shatt al Arab, at the head of the Persian Gulf. It is the terminus of major oil pipelines and is an important oil refining and shipping center. Abadan Island was ceded to Iran by Turkey in 1847. Abadan city was an unimportant village until the discovery (1908) of nearby oil fields. Its oil refinery (commissioned 1913) was the largest in the world by the 1970s. The refinery, together with the rest of the city, was destroyed during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. After the war's end in 1988, Abadan resumed oil production, but on a smaller scale.

Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography.